How This Underground Feminist Art Project Turned Miranda July Into a Filmmaker

In 1995, before Miranda July was a beloved filmmaker, artist, and author, she was a young woman with a borrowed video camera and an idea. That idea set her on the path towards an illustrious career as the director of films like Me and You and Everyone We Know and The Future, the author of books like The First Bad Man, and even a smartphone app called Somebody.

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Big Miss Moviola poster. Cut and paste flier original, 1995. 11

But first, there was "Joanie 4 Jackie." Originally called "Big Miss Moviola," it was a feminist film project that worked like a chain letter: Women sent her a film, and July would send them back a compilation of 10 films, all made by women.

Now, July has donated the full "Joanie 4 Jackie" archive to the Getty Research Institute, which has given the materials a new online home at joanie4jackie.com. Here, July tells us about the importance of preserving this intimate, raw, feminist art project—and how it helped her become the artist she is today.

On the 21-year-old Miranda July who started "Joanie 4 Jackie"

That Miranda July was 21 and newly with my first love, a woman, and surrounded by women making music, just after the Riot Grrrl scene. It was really a world in which there was nothing mechanical that we didn't take on ourselves, like fixing the car…all these things that you'd normally defer to someone else, usually a man. I remember someone even claimed they could just do dentistry themselves, you know?

So it didn't seem like a great leap to move the punk/Riot Grrrl approach to filmmaking although it is trickier. It's such an expensive medium—cameras aren't deployed just because a girl has a feeling. But at that time I thought, technology is changing! Video is so easy now! And maybe there's a new kind of movie that could be made that doesn't have any of the hallmarks of cinematic mastery, because those are irrelevant to this agenda, which is something much more interpersonal and spontaneous and raw.

On how she started the project

I myself had not made a movie yet—I sort of felt like I needed some role models, basically—so I made a pamphlet inviting other women to send me their movies and I would send them back a tape with their movie and nine other movies on it. This was during a time when you couldn't just see each other's stuff, there was no YouTube. Just seeing that there were other filmmakers changed everything for me.

Miranda July

Heide Foley

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On the first films she made

My first movie, Atlanta, which is on the second chain letter tape of the series, was about a 12-year-old Olympic swimmer and her mother, and I played both of them—and somehow managed to look both 12 and old enough to have a 12-year-old. For that first one, I was shooting it myself—it was literally just a borrowed video camera and me in my apartment, pressing record and running to the other side and acting, and intercutting these things.

There's an intro to one of the "Joanie 4 Jackie" tapes. I'm talking about "Joanie 4 Jackie" as if it's this huge empire, and I'm like standing in front of a large building as if it's a "Joanie 4 Jackie" building. I'm sort of making fun of my bluffing at that time. There was a lot of pain, actually—just scraping by. That project didn't make any money, and wasn't intended to, and I was a waitress and a stripper and an assortment of not-that-fun jobs. I was aware of the boldness of the project, the way it was challenging both me and other women, and I was using that grandiosity to create a world for myself.

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On the influence of the Riot Grrrl movement

I moved to Portland maybe right after Riot Grrrl officially stopped having meetings. Certainly I was friends with [bands] Bikini Kill and Excuse 17 and Heavens to Betsy, and I was in a band myself, which was not a good idea. We had a recording studio in our basement and we put on shows—my thing I was doing with shows was considered just like another branch. I showed movies in those venues. There'd be a break and I would show these movies, or sometimes I'd show up and perform.

On how she feels about "Joanie 4 Jackie" now

It's sort of stunning to me how many actual women filmmakers I knew. Like, I don't know that many now, and I probably never will. Granted, what constituted a filmmaker was kind of loose, but even that was important—that it wasn't some kind of membership that qualified you. I look back on it and I think, "Oh, that's why I had the confidence to make Me and You and Everyone We Know." It's not just that I was super plucky, and just had more wherewithal than other women. I think what I had that a lot of other women didn't was other women. I had this context in which I didn't feel special or unique, and that's a real gift.

What I had that a lot of other women didn't was other women

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There's one reason I would spend seven years on a website—because I feel really indebted to it and to the women who participated in it, and sent in their tapes and came to screenings. At the time I think I thought of it as a service I provided, but of course in retrospect the person running it is the person who benefits the most, the person who knows everyone. And in the absence of any other kind of security—no financial security, no institution I was tied to—I knew I could sleep in the homes of these women, they also supported my work before I really had much. I look back on it really gratefully.

On the paucity of women filmmakers

I think it's just always easier to do something that you grow up seeing a million examples of. And you feel entitled to do that job. That entitlement—I see it in my peers who are male filmmakers, that it's just a little different. Even the most sensitive, feminist-allied [male] filmmakers know that no one's going to question them on their authority to be making a movie, and the bias there is pretty strong. It's a hard job anyways, and if no one can conceive of it, then you're just pushing against that the whole time.

I've always been interested in archives and what's saved, and how that plays into what becomes history—what becomes the story of our country and the world and film. At a certain point I realized this collection is one of those things that, while it was important to me and the women it represented, would disappear without a trace unless it is formally archived. It was too underground and too intimate, and between women. It wasn't interested in being a talent showcase or any of the things that remain in history.

The fact that I became more well known is part of the reason I could do this. To the Getty's credit, when I went in there and presented the project, I thought I was selling it on me, you know? And they weren't that interested in me. They were more specifically interested in collections of women's videos, especially collectives. They're very devoted to preserving alternative feminist modes of video production. So I walked out of there after that first meeting really quite moved that they were interested for exactly the right reasons.

On what she hopes young women will get out of the project today

If I look back, I realize I thrived during a time when I really shouldn't have. No one knew we existed. No one was really supporting us, and yet we formed together a sustaining network that allowed us to flourish. The disregard could have been totally erasing and I think that's a useful model these days: that if that you're going to survive, you can come out of a difficult time stronger depending on what you did during that time, depending on who you drew around you.

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